The interlacing branches had pierced straight through their bodies, yet it did not hinder their movements

“Special Operations Department?”

Someone even recognised their uniforms and stood up from his seat, stiffly making his way towards Chi Zhou.

“I’m Zhao Lei, the person in charge of the Third Squad.”

The mutation had clearly greatly enhanced his physical capabilities. Zhao Lei was visibly faster than an ordinary sentinel.

Within three seconds, he had crossed more than ten metres and arrived in front of them, his towering figure casting a shadow over them.

He was a full three metres tall, far beyond the height of a normal human.

The director’s office had clearly not been designed for the mutated. The ceiling was only three metres high.

To keep the flowers on top of his head from touching the ceiling, Zhao Lei struggled to bend his neck, his head crushed into a distorted mass against it.

The muscles in his arms bulged into thick, solid masses, blue veins standing out across them. They looked like the grain of a tree.

The Alliance military’s uniforms were made from specialised materials. They were waterproof and fireproof, with excellent elasticity. They should have served their purpose during missions, but in circumstances like these, that elasticity became useful instead.

The fabric had been stretched to its limits, pulled taut against Zhao Lei’s body until even the military insignia had warped.

He was human, yet he was not.

—

Before entering the office, Xia Ye had imagined what he might find inside.

Corpses. Blood. Monsters. He had prepared himself to face all of it.

But he had never imagined seeing something like this.

No normal human being could have imagined that such a creature existed in this world.

‘He’ had a handsome face, but his features had already become distorted. Beneath every inch of his skin lurked tree fibres. His arms hung so long that they could reach his ankles, while his feet were unnaturally large, as though he were wearing flippers.

This should have been someone they knew better than anyone—a man in a military uniform.

The magnificent yet grotesque sight struck Xia Ye’s eyes, causing the calm expression on his face to shift ever so slightly.

“He’s…” Xia Ye asked, his voice strained. “From the Third Squad?”

Chi Zhou nodded.

He had already grown accustomed to such sights.

“Hello. I’m Chi Zhou, from the First Squad of the Special Operations Department.”

He looked calmly at Zhao Lei, compassion hidden beneath his gentle gaze.

“By order of the Alliance, we’ll be taking over Longgu Town Central Hospital from today onwards. I hope you’ll cooperate.”

Chi Zhou repeated the mission details in [Code XII], staring at Zhao Lei, who had already lost his human form.

He knew very well that this was no longer his former comrade.

But when Zhao Lei used the consciousness he had left to state his rank, Chi Zhou still responded as protocol required.

It was the final respect he could give him.

—

“Take over?”

Zhao Lei tilted his head in confusion, as though he did not understand what Chi Zhou had said.

His excessively long neck twisted to one side, his head drooping towards his shoulder. The sight was especially horrifying.

“We haven’t received any such order.”

His mouth suddenly split open, stretching all the way towards his ears, and his voice became extraordinarily shrill.

“Captain Chi, you’re exceeding your authority.”

A clicking sound came from Zhao Lei’s throat as he wheezed heavily.

“We won’t allow it! Longgu Town belongs to us!”

A piercing shriek that made one’s scalp crawl erupted throughout the office. Zhao Lei suddenly accelerated and charged towards the doorway.

Chi Zhou had clearly anticipated this.

The Desert Eagle’s trigger was pulled.

The Magnum round tore through the air with a powerful gust, striking Zhao Lei squarely in the forehead.

The instant the bullet entered his skin, the stamens on his head seemed to come alive. Thin, elongated tendrils burrowed deep into his eye sockets and ear canals, wrapping tightly around the bullet in an attempt to force it back out of Zhao Lei’s skull.

But the stamens could not stop the immense kinetic force produced by modern technology; the bullet pierced through his skull and shattered the fibres of the tree within.

The mass of trees throughout the office trembled, as though that single shot had struck every ‘person’ at once.

Zhao Lei—or rather, the flowers parasitising his body—had been enraged by Chi Zhou.

The bright-red stamens trembled in the air, desperately stretching out their tendrils in an attempt to seize Chi Zhou.

Chi Zhou did not retreat.

The second bullet followed immediately, flying along exactly the same trajectory and entering Zhao Lei’s forehead.

Zhao Lei staggered backwards. The stamens grew out through his eye sockets, enveloping his entire head. His mouth opened and closed, conveying an enraged voice that seemed to belong to no one in particular.

“Human! Insignificant human!”

He roared at Chi Zhou, his entire face twisting grotesquely, only to receive a disdainful glance in return.

“You can’t even speak properly, and you still have the nerve to spout nonsense?”

The moment Chi Zhou finished speaking, a dull boom came from inside Zhao Lei’s skull.

It was the bullet that had just entered his head.

The Magnum rounds had been loaded with mithril. This metal did not exist anywhere within the human galaxy and possessed an extremely powerful lethality against extraterrestrial organisms.

Thirty years ago, when the First Contaminated Zone gradually began to revive, the research institute entered the war zone and extracted this substance from the remains of high-level extraterrestrial organisms that had survived.

Aside from the mithril extracted from their remains, the research institute also extracted Black Gold engine oil from coagulated blood clots, which was used to power mecha.

The emergence of Black Gold engine oil had tripled the combat capabilities of mecha. From then on, even ordinary sentinel-guide pairs had gained the ability to fight extraterrestrial organisms.

After that, the research institute devoted itself to developing mithril weapons.

Inside Zhao Lei’s skull, the Magnum bullet suddenly exploded, blasting the stamens to pieces.

“Don’t try to control humanity,” Chi Zhou sneered. “We’re not insignificant.”

—

Zhao Lei swayed unsteadily before dropping to his knees. His head was gone.

A few lonely petals fell to the ground, only to be rapidly corroded by the liquid dripping from the other stamens.

“Holy shit, boss. You’ve already started?”

Jian Feiyang’s voice came from the corridor. He and Ying Jiawei had taken the side entrance. On their way upstairs, they had encountered several patients who refused to leave them alone, delaying them for a while.

Jian Feiyang walked in from outside and looked at the petals scattered across the floor.

“Uh… Looks like I don’t need to communicate with them anymore?”

As a guide, Jian Feiyang was not skilled in mental attacks, and his spirit animal was a gentle little raccoon.

During a mission ten years earlier, a mistake in the military’s command led Jian Feiyang and his partner into an extraterrestrial creature’s base.

His partner had died as a result, while Jian Feiyang had nearly gone berserk during the battle.

When Chi Zhou had led the Special Operations Department in to rescue him, more than half of Jian Feiyang’s Mental Domain had already been contaminated. Refusing to abandon a man struggling in the quagmire of his own consciousness, Chi Zhou had insisted on bringing him out of the base.

That very night, his records were encrypted and sealed before being transferred to the Special Operations Department.

After spending three months in confinement, Jian Feiyang passed the Social Administration Bureau’s assessment, confirming that he still belonged to humanity.

Even so, the military still refused to trust his loyalty.

It was Chi Zhou who had appeared before him once again, casually telling him through a cigarette clenched between his teeth that, after everything he had been through, the Special Operations Department was the only place he could call home.

Because he had once crossed the boundary between humans and mutants, Jian Feiyang was capable of basic communication with humans who had not yet undergone complete mutation.

According to Chi Zhou’s plan, Jian Feiyang should have established contact with Zhao Lei.

But now, Zhao Lei no longer had a head.

“No need,” Chi Zhou said. “They’ve all mutated.”

—

In the heat-filled air, an entire row of human-faced trees stared menacingly at them.

Someone spoke first.

“So hungry… So hungry…”

As if in chorus, cries rose and fell throughout the office.

Dry and hoarse, the voices were squeezed from the throats of these human-faced trees, which had long since become completely fibrous.

“So noisy,” Xia Ye remarked.

His Mental Domain rapidly expanded, enveloping Jian Feiyang and Ying Jiawei along with him and cutting them off from the contaminating intent contained within the chant.

The snow leopard extended its claws and scr4p3d them across the birchwood floor, leaving several sharp scratches behind.

The movement made the stamens uneasy.

No longer daring to swagger about, they all shrank back into their flower buds.

Xia Ye’s gaze swept across the human-faced trees seated around the long table before stopping at the very end.

A particularly massive tree sat there.

It had become nothing but a tree. A dense canopy had replaced its human head, while its tender yellow flower buds had developed into brilliant orange-red blossoms. Its stamens were black, releasing golden powder into the air.

Only the white coat it wore revealed that it had once been human.

It was the Director.

The director whom only those with a ‘serious enough illness’ could see.

It had no eyes. Instead, it stared at Xia Ye through its black stamens.

The snow leopard roared and leapt toward it.

The fierce mental attack stunned the human-faced trees, and the singing that had filled the office abruptly ceased.

The stamens instantly began growing wildly, extending countless tendrils towards Xia Ye’s snow leopard in an attempt to entangle it.

In mid-air, the black dragon swept its tail across them, severing them cleanly in half.

The snow leopard seized the director’s canopy, and amid the gale, thick leaves came rustling down.

The director’s massive branches thrashed wildly in mid-air, taking on an almost frenzied look as it howled repeatedly, trying to shake off the snow leopard restraining it.

A long, low, guttural sound was forced from his throat—an unintelligible babble that no one could decipher.

At the same time, Zhao Lei, who had fallen to the ground, slowly stood up.

—

“Secondary parasitisation,” Chi Zhou said briefly. “Energy from a higher-level species can revive a mutant and turn it into its substitute.”

The Desert Eagle was chambered once more; the mechanism gave two sharp, crisp clicks.

“Back off.” Chi Zhou moved to the very front. “Xia Ye, work with me to kill the director. Everyone else, provide support.”

The mithril bullet left the chamber, shooting precisely towards the director.

The director shifted its bulky body, its canopy swaying from side to side as it tried to evade the dangerous bullet.

It had witnessed the power of mithril bullets just moments ago.

In less than half a second, one had rendered its most beloved general completely inactive.

The director’s hands trembled, and a faint ripple seemed to appear in the air. The human-faced trees rose together, forming an impenetrable wall of flesh and wood before the director.

“What a nuisance.”

Chi Zhou had lost his patience, and a flame seemed to burn within his eyes

The gentle smile disappeared from his face, replaced by an indifferent cruelty.

The Desert Eagle fell to the ground.

He discarded a weapon that carried countless legends without the slightest hesitation.

He reached inside his coat and drew a slender blade.

The long blade, ‘Heaven’s Path’.

It had been forged from high-purity mithril, with a Bone-Eater embedded in its hilt—a core taken from the mother species of the extraterrestrial organisms.

The mother species was the highest-level existence among extraterrestrial organisms, the leader of the entire species.

The Bone-Eater was its most important component, possessing a suppressive effect over all lower-level creatures.

Chi Zhou had once piloted ‘Prometheus’ and torn open its abdomen, broken its ribs, and removed this Bone-Eater.

That battle had been a battle for humanity’s hope.

Xia Ye had seen the footage in countless promotional films.

The blade, sharpened on the blood of countless extraterrestrial organisms, tore through the air and charged irresistibly into the mass of human-faced trees, heading straight for the director.

“I’ll leave my back to you,” Chi Zhou said.

—

Xia Ye stood behind him, blocking Zhao Lei as he staggered towards them.

Zhao Lei had no head; through the severed cross-section of his neck, Xia Ye could clearly see the hollow interior of his body.

There was no flesh, no internal organs, no bones—only vines coiled throughout the shell of his body.

The tree had completely eaten him.

The real Zhao Lei had died long ago, and what remained was merely a puppet controlled by the director.

Xia Ye raised his hand and called the snow leopard back. Accompanied by several mental attacks, the snow leopard pounced on Zhao Lei.

Zhao Lei moved his legs sluggishly, trying to evade the snow leopard’s attack.

However, Xia Ye’s mental attacks interfered with the director’s control.

Zhao Lei’s movements were wooden. Against the agile snow leopard, he was completely outmatched.

The pure-white snow leopard tackled Zhao Lei to the ground, burying its sharp teeth in his neck and pulling out a thin strand.

A thread so faint it was almost invisible. It was a flash of sunlight was enough to make it disappear from sight.

It was too thin—so thin that even his Mental Domain could not detect it.

Xia Ye’s lips pressed into a straight line, displeasure flashing in his eyes.

As a guide, he should have been able to detect every detail and become the sentinel’s shield.

He viewed this as a failure on his part, and he did not allow himself to make mistakes.

Xia Ye’s hand rested on his shirt pocket, where a fountain pen lay—a pen Chi Zhou had given him.

After the research institute modified it, its instantaneous energy output could rival the energy blade equipped on first-generation mecha.

The cap fell away, transforming into a dagger that glimmered faintly.

The sharp blade sliced across Zhao Lei’s skin, and the slender thread suddenly snapped.

Zhao Lei, who had been flailing his arms as he fought the snow leopard, stopped moving immediately.

Like a puppet that had lost its strings, he collapsed straight to the ground, crashing onto the filthy birchwood floor with a heavy thud.

Xia Ye did not even spare him a glance.

He simply stood and walked towards the mass of human-faced trees.

“It’s time to end this.”

—

Xia Ye moved with incredible speed. He was even more like a beast than the snow leopard itself.

With the tips of his feet barely touching the long table, he leapt high towards the canopy of the human-faced tree.

His Mental Domain expanded without limit.

Under the immense enhancement, the world he constructed with his psychic power became clearer than ever, and nothing in the entire office could escape his sight.

The human-faced trees became patches of dim, grey colour.

Only the threads around their necks remained exceptionally clear, gleaming with an inorganic, cold light.

Xia Ye’s targets were clear; his dagger swept out in an arc, severing every thread dancing through the air.

He walked towards Chi Zhou one step at a time.

Behind him, the human-faced trees fell one after another.

By the time he reached Chi Zhou’s side, ‘Heaven’s Path’ had just sunk into the director’s core, cutting out its Bone-Eater.

Chi Zhou withdrew the long blade and tossed the Bone-Eater towards Xia Ye.

“Here already?” he asked with a smile.

Xia Ye caught the Bone-Eater.

“Mm.”

“You did very well,” Chi Zhou said. “I knew I hadn’t been wrong about you.”

The office had been reduced to ruins. The human-faced trees lay scattered across the floor, completely devoid of activity.

A sour smell hung in the air, like the stench of rotting rubbish at a rubbish dump.

Jian Feiyang covered his nose. “Captain, are we leaving now?”

Chi Zhou gave a slight nod and looked up at the ceiling.

Several cracks had silently appeared across the smooth ceiling. The floor began trembling beneath their feet, and the entire building seemed to sway slightly.

“The dissection room on Underground Level Two.”

Chi Zhou spoke decisively.

“The [Gate] is about to open.”

The author’s note:

Waaah, I wrote from a little after six in the evening until after two in the morning today.

I’ve never written this kind of story before, so I’ve been feeling really nervous about it this whole time. Reading your comments every day is my greatest motivation.

Seeing you say that you’re enjoying it really encourages me~

Thank you, my little angels~ I’m truly grateful.

T/N:
Hehe, today is my birthday so here’s to releasing chapters until 19~
There seemed to be small mishaps with the site, maybe because there are things that I want to try; luckily, it didn’t take too much time~
After September tho the release will be as usual once a week until I can increase the number of chapters ~

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